


all for us

by caramelcaramelcaramel



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drug Abuse, F/M, Fluff, Heroin Use, Rehab, Spideychelle, drug overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21761668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramelcaramelcaramel/pseuds/caramelcaramelcaramel
Summary: After his identity is revealed, Peter Parker disappears.He resurfaces years later...with track marks all over his arms.find updates below!TwitterTumblr
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Peter Parker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 45





	all for us

After his identity was revealed, Peter disappeared without a word.

For the first few weeks, we all figured it was for his own safety, until things died down or his name could be cleared.

But then his name was cleared. And he didn’t come back.

We started to worry. May’s health started to deteriorate, Ned almost failed a couple of classes, and even Happy was unhappy.

We knew he was alive. Fury kept an eye on him, and let us know periodically that he was okay, but wouldn’t tell us anything else.

It’d been a few years now. I had a studio apartment right off campus, and worked alongside Betty at the Daily Bugle.

If you asked me, I was content. I was working towards the psych degree I’d always wanted and had a job I loved and had a good group of friends. Girls from school I went out for drinks with every other Friday. Friends from high school I kept in contact with.

If you knew me, I was unhappy in a weird, grey way. There was this hole that Peter left behind that nobody had been able to fill. Since starting at NYU, I’d gone through three relationships, each only lasting three months.

They all gave me that rush, the butterflies, the caught breath in my throat.

Nobody made me feel safe, and warm, and happy.

That brings us to yesterday, walking down to a corner store to stock up on snacks for the weekend’s paper-writing sessions.

There was a spot on the street, right in front of an alley, where there were always junkies sitting and begging for money. I usually very deliberately stared ahead and paid them no attention, but today it was quieter than usual.

I glanced aside, and saw a boy sitting against a wall, needle by his side, barely breathing. He had a shaven head and looked skinny as hell, but he had a familiar t-shirt hanging off of his frame.

_Hey, I designed that shirt and sold it in sophomore year. Peter and Ned were the only ones that bought it._

“Peter?”

Empty eyes looked up at me, glazed over. He was different, but it was him.

“Em?”

Just hearing his voice threw me back three years, to our decathlon study sessions, to shared soft smiles and hesitant eye contact, to our kiss on the bridge and falling asleep together on the plane home.

Tears welled in my eyes, and I found myself rushing to his side and helping him up.

My paper writing plans were put on hold to make sure Peter showered and ate and wasn’t sick.

He was pale and skinny, face hollowed out and bones sticking out of his body. He was disoriented and then alert and then disoriented again. But mostly, he seemed scared.

It killed me to see him like this.

\---

I called Pepper and asked what to do, and she immediately sent Happy.

I helped Peter downstairs and out to the car, sitting in the back with him the whole time.

He was drowsy, keeping his head on my shoulder, mumbling incoherently once in a while.

When we got upstate, to the compound, Pepper met us, along with some doctors. They sat Peter in a wheelchair and took him to the medical wing.

“MJ,” Pepper said, “thank you so much.”

“Mommy! Mommy, where’s Peter?” Morgan called, running around the corner and pulling at Pepper’s cardigan.

“Peter needs some help right now.”

I smiled at Morgan. “How about I make you a grilled cheese?”

Morgan looked to her mom for encouragement. When Pepper nodded, Morgan ran to me.

She was eight now, and looking more and more like her dad every day. I held her hand and walked her to the kitchen, sitting her up on the counter while I made her a grilled cheese.

“Is Peter gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, of course, Morgan.”

“Why has he been gone so long?”

I looked at her. “I don’t know, sweetie. Sometimes people need to get away for a while. It sucks, but we knew he was going to be okay.”

“You won’t leave, will you?”

I stopped cutting cheese and stood in front of her. “Morgan, I could never leave you. But I also have the advantage of not having gone through everything Peter’s been through. Just because he left doesn’t mean he doesn’t love us. He was in a lot of pain.”

Her eyes were glassy. “I missed him.”

“I missed him, too, sweets.”

I hugged her tight as she started to cry, feeling my chest tighten. Hearing Morgan cry for Peter wasn’t new, but it was never any less heartbreaking. She was hurting for her big brother.

I couldn’t blame her. I’d been hurting for him too.

\---

When Peter woke up and had sobered up a little, I waited until Morgan and Pepper and May and Happy had all seen him. I called Ned and he said he’d come upstate after work, so I was still waiting outside the room.

I felt like I was the last person who should see him, you know? Everyone else was family. I was just a girl he’d kissed a couple times.

But then May emerged from his room.

“He asked to speak to you.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah.”

Hesitantly, I stood up. She gave me an encouraging smile, which I couldn’t force myself to return.

I walked into his room, keeping my steps light and quiet, part of me hoping he wouldn’t realize I was here.

Except that he was already looking right at me.

“You can come in. I don’t bite.” He gave that signature nervous laugh at the end, the one that tried to mask the fear in his eyes.

My hesitation melted and I sat down next to the bed, scooting the chair closer. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

His face fell. “Okay is a relative term.”

I didn’t know what to say. Because yeah, it was. He’d gone from our star decathlon member to a homeless heroin addict.

Fingers shaking, I reached out my hand and slipped it into his, giving him a soft smile.

“Can you stay?” he asked softly.

I nodded. “As long as you need me to.”

\---

Over the course of the next couple days, he started to get better. He was prescribed a couple medications, one to relieve the drug cravings and one to relieve the effects of withdrawal. Colour slowly began to return to his skin.

He was still too ashamed to go home, so I offered him my couch. He moved in, and things started to settle into place.

Pepper would bring Morgan over on Peter’s good days, and they’d play together while Pepper and I made dinner or just had coffee and chatted.

Ned would come over when I had to work late to keep Peter company. It was clear that he had PTSD or something, and we got nervous leaving him alone for long periods of time, so this was the solution. Ned always came out of it with a soft, sad smile.

Peter was different now. He wasn’t the soft, innocent boy I fell for. He’d been through some serious shit, barely survived, coped via drugs for years. He was jaded and sad and angry.

The anger was somewhere underneath. It hadn’t come out, but you could see it in his eyes sometimes. He’d sit on the couch, fiddling with a Rubix cube, and just…fume. Wouldn’t break the cube, wouldn’t grit his teeth or anything. But you could feel the anger in the whole apartment. I didn’t know what caused it, or what to do about it.

We started to fall into this routine when it was just us in the apartment. Soft laughs and smiles, brushing hands, leaning on each other. If he was cooking, I’d sit on the counter next to the stove, and we’d talk. If I was cooking, he come and stand next to me, never putting his arm around me, but you could tell he wanted to.

I wondered if he could tell I wanted him to.

It was a studio apartment, so bedtime was never really private. I could always tell when he was having a nightmare.

One night, I woke up to him moaning in his sleep, sweating, and eventually crying.

I got out of bed, padded across the room to the couch, and gently touched his shoulder.

He leaned into the touch for a brief moment, and then jerked awake.

“You were having a nightmare,” I breathed, kneeling next to the couch to talk to him. “Are you okay?”

He cried. Hard. Sobs wracking his whole body.

I pulled him into a hug, and he held me impossibly tight.

“I’m so sorry, Em.”

“For what?”

“For being a burden on you.”

That broke my heart. I pulled away, just enough to look him in the eyes.

“Peter, you’re not a burden. Trust me, I count my lucky stars every day that you’re here.”

He stared at me with these big, watery eyes.

“Come on, you’re sleeping in the bed with me tonight.”

“MJ, are you-”

“I don’t think you should be sleeping alone.”

Reluctantly, he kicked off the blanket and let me lead him to the bed.

“Are you sure you’re comfortable with this?” he asked, voice taking on a pillow-soft quality.

“We’ve fallen asleep together before,” I told him with a shrug. “And I trust you.”

We got into bed, laying about half a foot apart, both of us too hesitant to touch the other. There was a thick tension in the room now, the air feeling heavy.

I turned onto my side, to face him.

“Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

He tensed a little, still staring at the ceiling. “Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you come home?”

He didn’t answer for a while, and I just watched him breathe and stare at the ceiling and think. I didn’t think he was going to answer, but then he said, “I was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

Now he looked at me. “Scared that you believed what the news was saying. And even once my name was cleared, I couldn’t shake that.”

I propped myself up on my elbows. “Peter, I knew you. And I saw what happened that day. I didn’t believe it for a second.”

His eyes welled up with tears again. “I’m sorry I didn’t come home.”

“Hey, come here.”

I pulled him closer, wrapping my arms around him, and he cried into my shoulder.

“It’s okay, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.” I pressed a soft kiss to his forehead.

We fell asleep like that, tangled up in each other’s arms.

\---

Peter started to gain some weight back. His hair started to grow back in, too.

And our routine became a little more comfortable. My legs draped over his as we watched a movie. Soft cheek and forehead kisses.

But then one day I came home from class to find Peter passed out on the floor, a needle sticking out of his arm.

Shit.

I got him in my car and drove him back upstate to the base.

They got him back on the meds, and within a few hours, the heroin had worked through his system.

I stayed with him, in his hospital room overnight. Holding his hand, keeping an eye on his vitals, and eventually laying down with him when he asked, voice soft and shaky, for me to hold him.

We went home a couple days later.

I went to work the next day, and when I came home, Peter was gone. There was a sticky note on the counter.

“Ned helped me check into rehab. He has the phone number. Hopefully the next time I see you, I’m less of a mess.

“I’ll miss you.

“Peter.”

\---

We talked every night. I got the phone number from Ned, and found out when Peter’s free time was in the facility, and we’d spend every minute of his two hours of free time on the phone.

Sometimes we’d talk for every single second of the call, fascinated by each other’s thoughts on aliens or the future or politics.

Sometimes we’d talk for twenty minutes, and then exist on the line with each other, enjoying each other’s company while we did our own things.

A visiting day rolled around, and I skipped classes to go to the centre.

I rounded the corner into the common room, and saw Peter sitting at a table, doodling in a journal.

“Hey.”

He glanced up, and then ran up and hugged me. “MJ, you came.”

“Of course I did.”

Visiting days were honestly a lot of fun. There was usually yoga we could drop in on, or finger painting lessons (which always ended with a paint fight), or a cooking class. It was nice to see Peter slowly breaking away from that jaded exterior and going back to his old self. Every time I saw him, he was a little more like the Peter I fell for, and a little less like the Peter I found on the street.

And then one day, I got a call from the rehab centre.

When I got to the hospital, May and Pepper and Morgan were already there, sitting by Peter’s bed.

He’d been found in his room, having overdosed.

Nobody knew how he got heroin in the facility. Nobody knew why.

He was pale and still, lips colourless and chapped.

I sat down next to his bed, and set my hand on top of his, trying to ignore the track marks on his arm.

\---

The apartment felt especially grey and lonely while he was in the hospital, and when he went back to rehab. I had anxiety that crept into my everyday life, worrying about Peter, scared every time my phone rang that he’d overdosed again and maybe he wouldn’t recover this time.

My class notes had doodles of hospital beds and needles in the margins. My work for the Bugle became darker and darker as I researched and investigated drug use in New York, searching for answers.

Spring turned to summer, summer turned to fall, and fall turned to winter.

I came home one night after my last final of the semester, and walked down the hall to my apartment, mentally bracing myself for the sight of my dull, grey, empty apartment.

But when I opened it, it was warm, and full of light. String lights along the walls, my little table-top Christmas tree was set up on the kitchen island, decorated and plugged in, and the tiny dinner table was set beautifully, a little candle lit in the middle.

Peter was standing there, holding a black rose.

“Hey, Em.”

I was speechless.

“I, um, wanted to buy you a black dahlia, to match the necklace, but I couldn’t find any, so I hope the rose is okay.”

I nodded. Of course it was okay.

“So, I’ve never properly asked you out, so I got out of rehab today and cooked and decorated for Christmas, and I was hoping we could have a dinner date tonight.”

I nodded again, tears welling in my eyes.

“Em?”

I dropped my backpack and coat and ran across the apartment, into his arms. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me, spinning me.

When he set me down, I kept my arms around him, admiring the curls that were long enough to fall down over his forehead and the bright sparkly eyes.

“I love you,” he whispered.

I leaned in and kissed him.

That was the best Christmas dinner of my life.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is super rushed and short but I had an idea and finally had the inspiration to run with it!  
> Please excuse any typos, this wasn't proofread by anyone but me :)


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